A major challenge for marketers who are trying to get buy-in for social media from a “sales” guy or gal is that they can’t see the sale…they don’t know how it is going to impact revenue. In the corporate world, there is a large contingent of CEO’s and Chief Marketing Officer’s who started out in the sales world. Naturally, they found creative ways to deliver revenue and as they moved up the corporate ladder they either chose to move over to marketing or marketing is under the same umbrella as the sales team. So how in the world are you going to get them to understand the value of something as intangible as social media?

Then there is the other side of the coin. You need to get your sales people behind your social media channels and support information sharing so you can do your job more effectively. But your sales people are rewarded for…SALES. Getting them to take the time to pursue a case study with a client or ask for anything other than a sale is going to be tough, unless you can show them how it is going to help them.

You are dealing with the conundrum of “What’s In It For Me” syndrome. You aren’t alone, and can you really blame them. Just like you they want to do the best they can at their job. To be effective, you need to show them exactly how it is going to benefit THEIR goals, not YOUR goals.

First, you need to show them how social media ties to overall revenue and financial goals for the company. Specifically, you need to show them how it is going to HELP THEM DELIVER on their revenue and financial goals. That’s a pretty big concept, I know. Many of us are still trying to figure out where social media fits in our marketing strategy much less where it fits into the sales process.

Second, it is critical that you don’t walk in trying to get them to “understand” social media. It isn’t worth your time and quite frankly they probably don’t care. If they did they would already be on the band wagon. If you have executive support for social media, congratulations! However, recognize that eventually you are going to need to justify it’s existence or need sales support just like everyone else, so it’s better to start early.

So how do you do it? You can start by figuring out how to “Translate Social Media to the Sales Funnel.”

Full Frontal ROI and HootSuite partnered to provide this free whitepaper, which focuses on showing where social media fits within your sales process and how it helps drive more people into the top of your sales funnel creating more opportunities to convert leads. Whether you are a B2B or B2C marketer, if you are grappling with getting a sales-driven person to understand social media, these tips will help you.

It also provides excellent visuals of the social media sales funnel and clear metrics you can use to measure your progress over time. In the Full Frontal ROI no-fluff style, you will find actionable strategies that you can walk away and begin executing.

Download “Applying Social Media to the Sales Funnel”

Want more? Check out the Social Media Measurement BootCamp course, “3 Steps for Translating Social Media to YOUR Sales Funnel.” This e-book contains 36 pages of step-by-step instructions, worksheets and hands on exercises so you can align your current sales process with the social media lead and more importantly, track where you are losing them!

Have you faced this challenge? How did you handle it? Have you considered how social media helps your sales process?Are you a sales person who wants to understand how social media will help you? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the comment section. As always, multiple perspectives and healthy debates are welcome, but be respectful of each other.

Are your social media leads converting poorly? Are you struggling to show that social media is leading to actual sales? Do social media leads seem to get lost in your sales process? Here are some tips on where you should look if your social media leads seem to get sucked into oblivion.

Are Sales & Marketing Efforts Killing Your Social Leads

Marketing and Sales Efforts Can Kill Social Media Leads

We have all been there. You are busting your arse to build relationships with prospects in social media only to find that once you pass the lead on the sale disappears. What is killing your hard-earned leads? The answer may lie in your marketing process. Have you taken a look at what type of materials are sent to prospects? Many marketers haven’t taken a hard look at these materials since social media started driving leads and that may be part of the culprit. If not, second on the list may be your sales process.

Serial Social Media Lead Killer #1- Hard Sell Marketing Communications

Many of our existing marketing materials are geared toward a prospect who has expressed a direct interest in buying our product or service. But many times you are reaching social media leads much earlier in the buying process and at a point where they haven’t yet begun to research solutions or recognized that they have a problem you can solve. Additionally, social media leads tend to have a very large pushy sales radar. So your marketing communications pieces may feel like they are too pushy or have too many buy-now sales messages and will quickly turn these leads off. And as you know once we perceive a company as skeevy we run for the hills and never look back.

Serial Social Media Lead Killer #2- Hard Sell Sales People

If your marketing communications pieces aren’t killing the lead than it may be your sales people. Let’s face it, sales people are looking for results and have numbers to meet. They don’t have time to be dilly-dallying with your proverbial social media “fence-riders.” But they are all going into the same sales funnel and so they follow up with them like any other lead and work to close the deal. Just like your pushy emails, sicking pushy sales people on your social media leads may be a deal breaker.

So what do you do? Separate leads into two categories based on whether they came from: Direct Conversion Points or Indirect Conversion Points.

Direct Conversion Points

You are probably handling these lead well. They have seen a product demonstration, a product webinar, filled out a lead form for more information or some other conversion point in your process that shows that they are directly interested in your products. Your current communications likely show these customers product information and push them along the path to buy. Great. Let’s talk about the others.

Indirect Conversion Points

This is where your social media leads likely fall. They have downloaded an e-book, attended a content based webinar, clicked on a status update, or subscribed to your newsletter. To convert these leads you want to tailor your messages around helping them content that helps them self-diagnose the problem you solve and tips on researching solutions. Then once they find their way to a direct conversion point you want to transition them over.

From a sales perspective, they may not be far enough into the sales process to have a sales person following up with them like a direct conversion point lead. You may want to have a sales person do an introductory call and offer to help them with anything they need, but beyond that you probably want to put the sales team on hold until they reach the direct conversion point transition. Trust me, your sales people will thank you and so will your prospects.

Immediate Action Item: Create separate email lists for direct vs. indirect conversion points so you can market to them differently.

How about you? How are you marketing to social media leads compared to other leads? Do you have tips for readers? Please post a comment and share your thoughts and ideas.

Well, yes!  But there is some real validity to the concept.  It may be defined in many ways but this is how I look at it.

Marketing Integration means that you must take activities that are currently being executed individually and work to do them in tandem ultimately with the goal of making them support one another.

Now that’s just my spin on it and I’m sure others have their own.  But why is this really important?  Well, take a minute and think about the activities that you do today within your own sales and marketing department.  Here’s my list from marketing: Brand Strategy, Brand Awareness, PR, Advertising, Lead Generation Campaigns, Lead Nurturing Campaigns, SEO, SEM, Social Media, Product Marketing, Customer Retention Programs/Campaigns, Events, and Product Demonstrations.  From the sales side of the house there’s: outbound telesales, inbound telesales, field sales visits, and relationship-building contacts. I’m sure I missed a few, but you get the point.

Pretty much every company likely does these activities regardless of the role of the person doing them or which side of the house they fall.  What I find really interesting is how many companies do NOT align these activities so they achieve a common goal. Further, how many times I’ve seen individuals steaming ahead down a path and how the other side of the house has absolutely no idea the project is even going on!  I’ll admit I’ve been guilty of this in the past.  Sometimes, you get so busy that stopping to put together yet another death by power point presentation seems daunting.  I’ll get into my thoughts on how I feel about power point presentations in another post, I suppose!

I truly believe the perception at many companies is that the entire marketing mix does in fact work together because it is the sum of all the inputs that delivers the expected output, right? Sure, but do you want to deliver the sales results you had yesterday for the next 5 years?  Or do you want to exceed projections and deliver unprecedented profitability?

Well, I sure as heck do.  And here’s how I think it can be done.  Now, I’ll admit I’ve never been allowed to actually do all of these things in tandem because someone who doesn’t get it always cuts something out.  But it’s my theory and if you want to prove it for me, AWESOME! Let me know, I’ll watch you and cheer every step of the way.  So you wanna be a rockstar?  Well I don’t know what business you’re in, so I’m just gonna call whatever you do…well, IT.

Theme It

In order for your audience to get it, and for you to be able to keep it straight internally you need to have relevant themes of what you are trying to accomplish so everyone can align themselves to support it.  Now don’t go all crazy here and drink from the cup of stupid. You need to pick no more than 4 or 5 common themes or it will get confusing.  Ideally, you could keep it to 2 or 3.  And it doesn’t really even matter what your themes are, think of them almost like secret mission code names.  Now, that could be fun couldn’t it!  So my favorite three themes are Customer Acquisition, Customer Retention, and Brand Awareness. Why?  Because they are simple and I don’t know a single company who isn’t trying to accomplish all three at any given moment in time.  If you get really good at those things, then you can get all fancy schmancy and expand.  But quite frankly, I have yet to work for a company that had mastered all three.  So, if I was going to be clever and come up with some codes names for that..hmmm…let’s see…bear with me…YES!…Here you go…I would call it…Operation Kidnap the Baby, Operation Friends in Low Places, and OperationPerez Hilton.  Now the deal is, EVERYTHING you do has to fall under one of those operations.  Now it is possible you’ll have some that straddle the fence and support multiple operations. And for some people that just sends them for a loop, they can’t throw it into a bucket and therefore it is wrong.  Well I say, I wish everything I did supported multiple objectives.  Why?  Because that is freaking integration and you can truly peg like 1,000 birds with one stone if you play your cards right.  I say peg because I’m an animal supporter, but I’m not all nutso fanatic about it and couldn’t find a cooler way to say it.  No really, it is all about the cool.  So here we go.

Promote It

How do you promote yourself today.  Yeah, that.  Do that.  Tie it into your direct mail campaigns, your web campaigns, your social media activities, your PR activities.  Everything.  See what fits together and push the issue to make them work together.  Gasp…did you say align PR with sales campaigns???  Yup, sure did.  And here’s how.  Stop using campaigns that are about your product to open the door, unless your like mega-huge and everyone wants your product.  I’ll admit, Sherwin-Williams could get away with this effectively and so can Apple and every other mega-brand out there.  But you know what, chances are…YOU can’t.  So do something that the customer finds value in and promote that. Capture their information, and then Kidnap the Baby!  Use something people care about whether it’s a free training class, e-book, chotzky or something else, and then give it to them.  Yes, give it to them FREE.  Why because we all walk around still believing that you can really get things for free.  Now, us marketers, all know that NOTHING is ever really FREE!  Because you are going to give us your information to get it, and then we are going to use it to Kidnap the Baby and afterward we’re going to tell everyone you are one of our Friends in Low Places.

Socialize It

One of my brilliant co-workers who taught me everything I know about social media, whether she knew it or not, coined that term and I totally just stole it!  You know who you are, @JessieX! So, if you are using social media then you know it’s a two-way street as I’ve mentioned before.  And as long as you haven’t upchucked your marketing messaging all over your followers then you still have followers, right!  And since they are still following you then you have done something to provide value to them.  And no, tweeting freaking article links all day doesn’t count. So tell your network what you are doing and start a conversation around it.  Do they like it, hate it, jump up and down on it, or what?  You need the feedback to do better next time, so you might as well get it from your loyal followers.

PR IT

Yeah, I know press releases are pretty much worthless pieces of space but you have to do them.  All companies have to do them.  So if you have to waste your worthless piece of space on some corporate crafted puppet-speak then make it work for you.  Don’t just send out the press release and check it off your list.  Create an optimized version of the release for your website. What does optimized mean?  Well first it means you started with a list of keywords that are relevant to your announcement and you have interwoven them in, and second it means you include links and make it easy for others to link to the page using those cool little web 2.0 linky icons.

Community IT

Do you have a community?  Yeah, I think most companies have invested a couple of dollars in some kind of community board at least.  And some have really set the standard for what community is all about.  My two cents on that starts like this.  A real community offers ways for people to connect, draw value, and find other like-minded individuals to be “friends” with and then use that opportunity to suck the information I need out of them like a Hoover. Because unless you are Mary Theresa, you’re probably a little narcissistic like the rest of us and mostly care about your own needs.  I found a great one in my research.  www.intronetworks.com The level of information they collect in their profile is truly astounding, and they do it in the coolest way I’ve ever seen.  Did I mention, it is all about the cool.  And back to the Hoover, you can use that information to profile groups of your customers into nice little common categories so you can address their needs in one fell swoop.  Now, hold on a minute.  I’m trying to see how many useless catch phrases I can throw into one post.  So count ‘em with me and throw a comment with your guess.  At some point I’ll go back and count them myself.

Rave It

Do you have people who don’t respond?  Sure all of us do.  Well make sure you tell them what they missed and then if you can turn around and give them whatever they missed it’s even better. For example, if you’re holding a webcast record it and send a link to the people who missed it, then turn around and put the video on YouTube so people who don’t come to your site have a chance of seeing it.

Support It

I read a really great two-part e-book called funnelnomics that really drove this home to me. http://is.gd/vXOC You’ve just got to stop doing things one time, or even twice and expecting some phenomenal results.  The key is to keep doing it and measuring it when you have some true data to work with.  Some of the best ideas don’t pay off the first time they are tried.

Don’t Forget About It

Make sure you put every single person into a lead funnel.  If you’re talking about your Friends in Low Places then there is a retention funnel that should exist for them.  You’re still working on Kidnapping the Baby?  Okay well you probably have some funnels for that to.  I personally, like the slow, medium and fast track. Oh, but what about Perez Hilton? We haven’t talked much about him?  Well, all of his friends go into a track to.  You should have a communication plan for all of your press outlets, your advertisers, your tradeshow associations and anyone else.  We get caught into the trap of viewing these as activities or projects that we execute.  But you have to remember that on the other end there are people.  And anytime there is a person you have an opportunity to build a relationship. And when you truly have “friends” in both high and low places who you work to equally support, the rest is history!

I’ve spent some time looking at what is happening in the economy and how companies are adjusting.  In my career I have seen many different corporate cultures.  They have ranged from being nimble and quick to respond to market conditions to bureaucratic and unable to adjust in time.  Interestingly, the company’s size did not make this determination but rather it is fueled by the culture that is found within the organization.  And mainly that culture is derived from the leaders of the organization.  That’s really not rocket science. However, in today’s economy it is imperative that companies are able to quickly react to what’s happening and adjust their actions accordingly.  In marketing this is truer than ever before.

What I see happening around us in mid-size companies with conservative cultures:

In Sales Departments- Sales people are struggling to make their numbers and are using aggressive tactics to close the deal that they never would consider in an up economy.  But the market is tough and they have to fight, really fight, for every sale.  They have become quick to blame marketing for not giving them enough leads but haven’t realized that there aren’t as many leads out there and they are killing off the ones that do come in.  In the meantime, they keep turning over the same rocks hoping that a pile of money will be under them.

In Marketing Departments- Marketing teams are trying to balance long-term lead generation with generating short-term sales.  Budgets that focus on long-term lead generation are being slashed and everything is going into the short-term win.  For companies that did not have strategies to manage this before their marketers are rushing around trying to come up with a game plan.  Once they do, the game plan gets trapped in the approval process and either gets approved too late or the items that carry the most risk and likely largest payoff are stripped out of the plan before it is executed.

Here’s the reality.  What used to work ain’t gonna work anymore!  And what you’re probably finding is that some of the people who seemed totally competent two or three years ago are really total idiots who were able to ride the wave of others success! It’s easy to be successful in an up market because pretty much anything you do will work.  It takes really strong leaders who are willing to take risks and innovative marketers prepared to break out of the pack when the market is tough.  Do you see the ability for that to happen in a conservative company?  The ability to see the payoff in the long-run while capitalizing in the short-term?   The ability to trust your experts and have faith that they know what they are doing? The ability to make quick decisions on something you might not fully understand? In the conservative companies I’ve worked for there is zippy chance that they are going to take a leap of faith while their asses are being held to the fire. They want to be in the comfort zone, the place they know and can explain in three words or less.  I’ll go back to my previous statement.  What used to work ain’t gonna work anymore!  If you can’t get out of your comfort zone and try something new and don’t have a ton of cash in the bank to see you through low or no-profitability for a couple of years, you will fail.

Here is what companies can do to break out of the pack and capture market-share from their competitors.  Because let’s face it.  That’s the only way you are going to grow in the short-term.

Be Bold! Don’t be scared to take risks on ideas that seem a little crazy at the time.  Do you think anyone besides Jack Dorsey and a few investors ever thought that telling a bunch of people that you’re eating lunch at your desk on Twitter would ever be a business model that would work?  Probably not.  If you want to break out of the pack you need to have a group of like-minded creative individuals at the helm who are willing to do the same old, same old while taking risks on a few “seemingly” crazy ideas to the old bureaucratic cranky folk. That doesn’t mean take on any idea that comes you way.  Check it against reality, but if you can do something with minimal investment that doesn’t risk the company but could be huge then try it!

Integrate, Integrate, Integrate! Take all those things you’ve been doing for years in little silos and look for synergies.  Look for ways they can support each other and do it.  Make them work together or don’t do them anymore. This is especially crucial when it comes to sales and marketing teams.  Sales can’t offer a discount to every person who calls and undervalue the value proposition for your product that marketing has worked so hard to establish.  Marketing can’t spend hundreds of thousands of dollars running brand awareness campaigns when sales are in the tank.  Create a supportive environment, on both sides of the house.

Get Rid of Pet Projects! Every company has at least one.  Some project a member of the executive team came up with that is totally stupid but no one has the chutzpah to stand up and say it. So a limited number of people are assigned to work on the idea and it stays under the radar enough that people forget about it.  Stop the project!  NOW!  And if you have a hard time knowing what people are working on look for a web-based project management system.  There are many out there but I’ve had a lot of success with Marketing Central in managing small and large complex projects.

Get on the Social Media Bandwagon! This is one of the most cost-effective tools you can start using TODAY to connect with your customers and prospect.  Please notice, I said connect.  I didn’t say vomit your marketing message on the world. When you get involved with social media remember that if you want to be relevant to your customer and prospect base you need to have two-way conversations.  You need to talk about things they care about and let them know you care about their perspective if you want them to listen to your marketing speak when you deliver it.  Make sure you have a person behind the tool who engages with people and doesn’t talk like a corporate puppet.  You need to have a blog and Twitter account, not some corporate BS blog or Twitter account, but corporate accounts run by individuals that provide value and lets people know that you actually have human beings who work for you. If you don’t trust anyone let your CEO be your spearhead, but if you do let your training team give out tips and tricks, let your marketing team share their expertise with other marketers, let your sales team talk about what they are hearing is happening with other customers (no names unless you get permission.)  Let your company’s real personality shine and you won’t be sorry!  At least not too often.  Eventually, someone will say something you don’t want to be said, or say it in a way you wouldn’t have said it.  But you know what.  GET OVER YOURSELF. You aren’t perfect either.  Choose people you trust.  That is the key.  This allows you to truly be in relationship with your customers, rather just casual acquaintances who exchange money every once in a while.

Stop Doing What You’ve Always Done And Expecting the Same Result

That really doesn’t need a lot of explanation.  But if you think you can be successful today by doing what you did yesterday, you are sadly mistaken and unfortunately tomorrow you might be out of business.

But there is some good news.  This is an opportunity for the small and the mid-size company to aggressively take market-share from their large competitors while they try to break through the own bureaucracy and correct course.  Progressive, forward-thinking companies that are able to quickly adapt will come out ahead!

In summary, if you aren’t already, you’ve got to start Thinking Big and Acting Small.